


Excerpts From Five Sets of Thousands

by deskclutter



Category: The Sandman
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gen, Multi, Pretentious, umbrella in the rain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-25
Updated: 2010-06-25
Packaged: 2017-10-10 06:38:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/96709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deskclutter/pseuds/deskclutter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dream and Thessaly, through the lens of five pictures.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Excerpts From Five Sets of Thousands

  
a book, unwritten; from a private collection unavailable to the general readership of the Dreaming's Library

 

I.  
__

_The eye is drawn first to the woman, who stands almost as a passive force in the centre-left of the painting. She is a pale, almost colourless shadow, surrounded by a typhoon of madcap everyday objects one might expect to see in real life, but subtly distorted in a varied range of styles. A set of keys on an indistinct keyring is filtered through a waving field of blurry colour, as though water spilt itself on the keys alone. The gaudy shades that score boldly through the piece are unaltered by the accident. One may pick out a tennis ball in vermilion shades, a lime green window-pane that looks out on a slanted crimson splatter of rainbow-sheened oil, an electric yellow dinner plate splattered with hot pink shades of leftover meat giblets. A disproportionately large feather drifts lazily across one of the woman's arms, its outline constructed by irate lines like an indignant cat.  
_

_The amalgam of chaos does not otherwise touch the woman, whose careless poise does not disguise the wary intrigue in her bespectacled eyes, which have darted towards the right of the frame. A dark crosshatching has etched its way onto the messy canvas, sparkling into seductively peaceful existence. It seems to reach out to the woman, as does the faint outline of the man therein. The dark is an oasis in the frantic huddle of splashing, eye-searing colour; the woman does not seem averse to its charms, though there is nothing to imply that she will give in to it. There is nothing that holds her back, however.  
_

_Though this aspect is not immediately coruscant to the casual viewer, a more astute observer may understand that the background shadows of blue and green and purple spell out the shape of a twisted Egyptian symbol: the ankh._

 

II.  
__

_There is a man and a woman. One is pale as an English watercolour, and the other is dark with enchantment. The stars twinkle in his eyes even as the sunlight pours delightfully against the lens of her spectacles. They appear to be conversing in a rather subdued manner; knowing the subjects at hand, one might instead observe that the two are rather animated. They have drawn close, but they do not touch; the man walks to the right as the woman dominates the centre of the piece.  
_

_Shadows stand in short relief here as the bright dazzle of the morning breaks over the dew on the air, which lingers as naturally as stardust lingers on the night sky. Little ducks tumble head over tail upon the otherwise solid ground that the two occupy, falling over like sleepy automatons. They are oddly hued in pale rose and photosynthetic green.  
_

_The sun is a bright circlet in the sky, as though the land were as young as Charn of ancient ballad was old. Perhaps in the distance, a lion and a unicorn have sung a new land into life, but the shades beyond the white gesture of the man's hand hold a multitude of possibilities: a field of posies, a battalion of library shelves, a palace fit for a queen.  
_

_But the woman does not see this. As though one could if one were focusing so closely on the minute perfections of one's conversational partner as she is!_

  
III.  
__

_There is a man and a woman. But the focal matter of the piece is more heavily placed on the setting of the artwork, which is an almost macabre sort of whimsy.  
_

_Fiddles swell fruitfully upon the trees around the green, hardening from an unripe olive shade to a richly textured woody instrument, fully strung and tuned. One might even expect them to burst into spontaneous song. One of the odd small creatures that dance pixie-like between the shadows of the bushes, leaving dust behind them like snails, has proven its blatant distrust of any such phenomenon; it has taken matters into its own hands and is sawing a reel on the golden strings, limned in the light that filters through the trees. Satyrs wriggle their tails behind small shrubs, and dryads wreak unholy vengeance on the unlucky one who is caught. The unicorn is galloping almost coquettishly between the shadows surrounding the green, while the lion paces fitfully in the sort of manner the satyrs themselves might envy. One might believe that they are singing yet.  
_

_Upon one of the branches of the largest tree stands a table, wrought of white-coated iron, and it is adorned with a dainty umbrella. On white chairs of a set, two men, one jollity personified -- rotund belly and all -- the other the very soul of must and meticulous categorising with his beaky nose and round spectacles, take a leisurely afternoon lemonade.  
_

_Beneath the trees, where roots drink deep, small insects crawl; a grasshopper fiddles on its leg. These things tangle into the grave, age having taken its toll upon the sanctity of death. Thin tendrils have unfurled around the light wing bones, and an earthworm has wriggled around an eye socket. The clean slashes around the breastbone have not deteriorated thus far. He was a handsome raven, when he had been alive, reminisce the gentlemen above the trees.  
_

_None of these intrude upon the silence of the man and woman, who walk within the centre of the green, their hands unseen. Fiddle music plays anon, and great butterflies flash their spotted wings in the perfectly round circumference of sunbeams._

  
IV.  
__

_There is a woman, and she sits amid a veritable army of books, her hair let down past her shoulders in a sensibly straight wave of brown. There is no sound in a vacuum, and this place is somewhat similar, being a library and prone to silence.  
_

_Books fall into place with slow lines of motion, new unwritten books being written minute by minute. They sop up the spaces in the neverending shelves like dirty grey rags, but they are crisper and cleaner, and the ever-watchful librarian will allow no decay into his domain, sharp raven's eyes and inquisitive nose keeping the very idea at bay.  
_

_The woman is by the right of the canvas now, but not to far right; the books have reserved that space there. She is, at the moment, reading, and there is no sign to her of her lover, other than the shifting shadows that sleep fitfully against the library walls.  
_

_She does not see the wary gleam of starlight that flashes in a doorway up the stairs and on the left. The man glances fleetingly at her, satisfied that no mischief to her person has been committed._

  
V.  
__

_There is a man; he is the whole, and the sum of the whole.  
_

_The universe is his dark robes, and his eyes are the false starlight in the heavens. His mass of hair runs untamed across the ceiling of the painting, and a world is opened where his heart should be.  
_

_In this world, the sun has gone away to hide behind the rain, leaving faint stardust to glitter in sodden despondence behind dulled lashes. The faeries creatures, borrowed from Faerie, are no more, only the daring few staring cautiously out from the darkest folds of the man's cloak.  
_

_Fiddler's Green is drinking in the rain, though the rotund man has a solemn expression on his face, and he is making that expression at the gloomy librarian, who stands helplessly in the corner. A raven sighs into the wind, so that the man does not hear, and all in this place are grey and drear.  
_

_Even the black umbrella that a white arm is holding forth, above the head of the man within the world._


End file.
